FDR2

From the beginning to the end it was constant in one heroic enterprise YD war to the death upon evil, upon greed,

They were eager for America to get into a war if it came. But they felt the people had to be drawn along a little at a time. They wanted the President to frighten the people a little as a starter. But he increased the recommended dose. The reaction was so violent that they felt it put back by at least six months the purpose they had in mind YD rousing America to a warlike mood. However, following the Panay incident, Mr. Hull began to churn up as much war spirit as possible and through the radio and the movies frantic efforts were made to whip up the anger of the American people. There never has been in American politics a religion so expansively and luminously righteous as the New Deal. poverty and oppression. It had, in fact, one monstrous enemy against which it tilted its shining spear seven days a week and that was SIN. If you criticized the New Deal, you were for sin. There is no vast sum of money in holding office. The riches are in the perquisites, the graft, legal and illegal, often collected by men who do not hold office but who do business with those who do. Some Democratic chieftains of the newer stripe began to drift into vice rackets of various sorts. It was this Tammany at its lowest level which surrendered to the New Deal and became finally the political tool of Mr. Roosevelt in New ork. From an oldYDfashioned political district machine interested in jobs and patronage, living on the public payroll and on various auxiliary grafts, some times giving a reasonably good physical administration of the city government, some times a pretty bad one, some times very corrupt, some times reasonably honest, it became a quasiYDcriminal organization flying the banner of the Free World and the Free Man. Cermak fought Roosevelt's nomination at Chicago, and went to Miami in February, 1933 to make his peace with Roosevelt where the bullet intended for Roosevelt killed him. {Who fired the shot? - sog} d before the House Committee Investigating UnYDAmerican Activities. Frey, in a presentation lasting several days, laid before the Committee a completely documented account of the penetration of the CIO by the Communist Party. He gave the names of 280 organizers in CIO unions It was the Communists who were engineering the sitYDdown strikes and who instigated and organized the Lansing Holiday when a mob of 15,000 blockaded the state capitol and 2,000 of them, armed with clubs, were ordered to march on the university and bring part of it back with them. At the Herald Tribune forum in New ork City about this time the President delivered one of the bitterest attacks he had ever made on a government official. It was against Martin Dies for investigating these Communist influences in the sitYDdown strikes. Sidney Hillman would become not only its dominating mind but Roosevelt's closest adviser in the labor movement and in the end, though not himself a Democrat, the most powerful man in the Democratic party. Sidney Hillman28 was born in Zargare, Lithuania, then part of Russia, in 1887. He arrived here in 1907 after a brief sojourn in England. it is entirely probable that Hillman, while not a Communist, was at all times sympathetic to the Communist philosophy. He was a revolutionist It is certain that the Russian revolution set off a very vigorous flame in Hillman's bosom. In 1922 he hurried over to Russia with a plan. He had organized here what he called the RussianYDAmerican Industrial Corporation with himself as president. Its aim was to operate the "textile and clothing industry of Russia." Hillman's corporation sold to labor organizations at $10 a share a quarter of a million dollars of stock. The circular letter of the corporation soliciting stock sales among labor unions said: "It is our paramount moral obligation to help struggling Russia get on her feet." Hillman went to Russia to sell the idea to Lenin. He cabled back from Moscow: "Signed contract guarantees investment and minimum 8 per cent dividend. Also banking contract permitting to take charge of delivery of money at lowest rate. Make immediate arrangements for transmission of money. Had long conference with Lenin who guaranteed Soviet support." Hillman was never an outright exponent of Communist objectives. He was, however, deeply sympathetic to the Communist cause in Russia and to the extreme leftYDwing ideal in America, but he was an extremely practical man who never moved upon any trench that he did not think could be taken. He never pressed his personal philosophy into his union and his political activities any further than practical considerations made wise. He was a resolute man who shrank from no instrument that could be used in his plans. He was a cocksure, selfYDopinionated man and he was a bitter man, relentless in his hatreds. He had perhaps one of the best minds in the labor movement YD sharp, ceaselessly active and richly stored with the history and philosophy of the labor struggle and of revolutionary movements in general. When Lewis and Dubinsky at a later date would leave the CIO, Hillman would be supreme and would reveal somewhat more clearly the deep roots of his revolutionary yearnings that had been smothered for a while under the necessities of practical leadership. There is no doubt that Hillman was one of the first labor leaders to use the goon as part of his enforcement machinery. Why should LaGuardia want to scuttle the investigation of a notorious murder? Why should the President of the United States refuse to deliver Lepke to Dewey and thus save him from going to the chair? Why save the life of a man convicted as the leader of a murder syndicate? Who was the leading politician supposed to be involved? Who was the nationally known labor leader? The murder for which Lepke was convicted and wanted for execution by Dewey and shielded by Roosevelt was, as we have seen, that of Joseph Rosen. Rosen was a trucking contractor who was hauling to nonYDunion factories in other states for finishing, clothing cut under union conditions in New ork. He was put out of business by Lepke in the interest of a local of Hillman's Amalgamated and Rosen was threatening to go to the district attorney and tell how this was done. But for some reason there rose to the surface at this time a lawless element, some of them criminal, some of them lawless in the excess of their revolutionary zeal, some of them just plain grafters. And these elements constituted the most powerful section of those groups that were supporting the President. This was in no sense the Army of the Lord, as it was so widely advertised. He wanted ambassadors from their own countries to tell them that other governments were "looking to Roosevelt as the savior of the world," as he put it himself. Farley admits this was done and says it was a mistake and that he said so at the time. With the rise of the New Deal, however, a vast army of persons appeared on the payroll of the federal government and because some of the payrolls were flexible and had no connection whatever with the Civil Service, it was a simple matter for the government to use this ancient but now enormously enhanced tool to control votes in particular localities. The story of the third term campaign which we shall now see is the story of dealing with all these groups, and the feasibility of doing so successfully was enormously enhanced by the fact that in September, 1939, just about the time the active work for the coming convention was under way, Hitler marched into Poland. {Just happens to fit right in with Planned Government/Economy - sog} On July 17, 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated for the presidency for the third time. The prologue to this event was supplied by Europe. When the convention met, Willkie seemed the most unlikely of these candidates, but his strength grew. Dewey was eliminated on the fourth ballot and on the sixth, in a contest between Taft and Willkie, the latter was nominated in one of the most amazing upsets in convention history. The Democrats believed that Willkie would make a formidable opponent. But from the moment he was nominated the result of the election could no longer be in doubt. Charles McNary, Republican leader in the Senate, was nominated for the vice presidency. The joining of these two men YD Willkie and McNary YD was so impossible, they constituted so incongruous a pair that before the campaign ended McNary seriously considered withdrawing from the race. There was a moment in that convention when one voice was lifted in solemn warning, the full meaning of which was utterly lost upon the ears of the delegates. Former President Hoover, in a carefully prepared address, talked about the "weakening of the structure of liberty in our nation." He talked of Europe's hundredYDyear struggle for liberty and then how Europe in less than 20 years surrendered freedom for bondage. This was not due to Communism or fascism. These were the effects. "Liberty," he said, "had been weakened long before the dictators rose." Then he named the cause: "In every single case before the rise of totalitarian governments there has been a period dominated by economic planners. Each of these nations had an era under starryYDeyed men who believed that they could plan and force the economic life of the people. They believed that was the way to correct abuse or to meet emergencies in systems of free enterprise. They exalted the State as the solvent of all economic problems. These men shifted the relation of government to free enterprise from that of umpire to controller. Directly or indirectly they politically controlled credit, prices, production or industry, farmer and laborer. They devalued, pumpYDprimed and deflated. They controlled private business by government competition, by regulation and by taxes. They met every failure with demands for more and more power and control ... societies oneYDfourth socialist, threeYDfourths capitalist, administered by socialist ministries winding the chains of bureaucratic planning around the strong limbs of private enterprise. Mr. Hoover then undertook to describe the progress of this baleful idea here in a series of headlines: Vast Powers to President; Vast Extension of Bureaucracy; Supreme Court Decides Against New Deal; Attack on Supreme Court; Court Loaded with Totalitarian Liberals; Congress Surrenders Power of Purse by Blank Checks to President; Will of Legislators Weakened by Patronage and Pie; Attacks on Business Stirring Class Hate; Pressure Groups Stimulated; Men's Rights Disregarded by Boards and Investigations; Resentment at Free Opposition; Attempts to Discredit Free Press. e State Planned and Managed Capitalism Roosevelt executed a political maneuver that beyond doubt caused great embarrassment to the Republicans. He announced the appointment of Henry L. Stimson, who had been secretary of State under President Hoover, as Secretary of War, and Frank Knox, candidate for vice president with Landon in 1936, as Secretary of the Navy. He was laying his plans cunningly to have himself "drafted." The movement began some time in 1939 and the leaders in it were Ed Kelly of Chicago and Frank Hague of New Jersey. The debacle was the plan Roosevelt was engineering to literally put the party out of business by inducing its leaders not to contest his election. Commentators like Dorothy Thompson and H.V. Kaltenborn and other proYDwar writers were calling on the Republicans not to contest the election. And Roosevelt schemed to induce the presidential candidates of the party in 1936 to become Secretaries of War and Navy respectively in his cabinet. Wallace He has been pictured as a vague and impractical mystic, half scientist, half philosopher, with other ingredients that approach the pictures in the comic strips of the professor with the butterfly net. Wallace brought men like Tugwell into the Department as his UnderYDSecretary of Agriculture To understand what made this thoroughly dangerous man tick it is necessary to look at another widely advertised side of his nature YD his interest in mysticism. Some time in the 'twenties, a gentleman by the name of Nicholas Constantin Roerich appeared on the American scene. Roerich was a highly selfYDadvertised great philosopher on the Eastern Asiatic model. He gathered around himself a collection of admirers and disciples who addressed him as their "Guru" YD a spiritual and religious person or teacher. He dispensed to them a philosophic hash compounded of pseudoYDogism and other Oriental occult teachings that certain superior beings are commissioned to guide the affairs of mankind. Roerich wrote a long string of books YD "In Himalaya," "Fiery Stronghold," "Gates Into the Future," "The Art of Asia," "Flame in Chalice," "Realm of Light." Logvan and Logdomor were the names by which Horch was known in this mystic circle. stories in English language newspapers in China indicated that Roerich applied to the 15th U.S. Infantry in Tientsin for rifles and ammunition and that the expedition had mysterious purposes. He cried out in ecstasy in a speech: "The people's revolution is on the march and the devil and all his angels cannot prevail against it. They cannot prevail because on the side of the people is the Lord." Now he was fighting not George Peek and Hugh Johnson and Harold Ickes. He was fighting the devil and the bad angels. And he had on his side the lord, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the good angels YD the Democrats and the CIO and, in good time, he would be joined by Joe Stalin and Glen Taylor, the singing Senator from Idaho. He would begin making world blueprints YD filling all the continents with TVAs, globeYDcircling sixYDlane highways, world AAAs, World Recovery Administrations, World Parliaments and International Policemen. This was the man chosen for Vice President by Roosevelt who had warned that his health was not too good and who forced this strange bird upon his party in the face of a storm of angry protest. . One of Roosevelt's early acts in foreign affairs was to recognize Soviet Russia. Three months later YD February 28, 1934 YD Elliott went into a deal with Anthony Fokker to sell the Soviet government 50 military planes for a price which would leave a commission of half a million dollars for Elliott and the same for Fokker It is estimated that she has received during the 15 years since she entered the White House at least three million dollars YD which is not very bad for a lady who had no earning power whatever before she moved her desk into the Executive Mansion, a lady whose husband spent a good deal of time denouncing the greed of men who made less for directing some of the greatest enterprises in America.17 Nevertheless, in spite of these defiances of all the amenities, all the laws imposed by decency, all the traditional proprieties and all that body of rules which highYDminded people impose upon themselves, the Roosevelt family, through a carefully cultivated propaganda technique not unlike that which is applied to the sale of quack medicines, imposed upon the American people the belief that they were probably the most highYDminded beings that ever lived in the White House. Behind this curtain of moral grandeur they were able to carry on in the field of public policy the most incredible programs which our people, unaccustomed to this sort of thing, accepted because they believed these plans came out of the minds of very noble and righteous beings. Why did the President permit his wife to carry on in this fantastic manner and why did the Democratic leaders allow her to do it without protest? ou may be sure that whenever you behold a phenomenon of this character there is a reason for it. The reason for it in this case was that Mrs. Roosevelt was performing an important service to her husband's political plans. There were never enough people in the country belonging to the more or less orthodox Democratic fold to elect Mr. Roosevelt. It was necessary for him to get the support of groups outside this Democratic fold. In the election of 1944, Governor Dewey got nearly half a million votes more on the Republican ticket than Roosevelt got on the Democratic ticket, but Roosevelt was the candidate of two other parties YD the American Labor Party of the Communists and the Liberal Party which was a collection of parlor pinks, technocrats, pious fascists and American nonYDStalinist Communists. These two parties gave him over 800,000 votes and it was this that made up his majority in New ork. The same thing was true in Illinois, in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and other large industrial states, although the fact was not so obvious because the radicals operated inside the Democratic party where they could not be so easily identified. It was in this field that Mrs. Roosevelt performed her indispensable services to the President. It was she who fraternized with the Reds and the pinks, with the RedYDfascists and the technocrats and the crackpot fringe generally, gave them a sense of association with the White House, invited their leaders and their pets to the White House and to her apartment in New ork, went to their meetings, endorsed their numerous front organizations Finally in 1899 when she was 15 years old she was sent to a school called Allenwood, outside of London. It was a French school kept by an old pedagogist named Madame Souvestre who has taught Eleanor's aunt in Paris before the FrancoYDPrussian war After Roosevelt was stricken with infantile paralysis in 1921, she suddenly found herself for the first time in her life in a position approaching power on her own feet. While she, with her rather stern sense of formal responsibility, made every effort to bring about her husband's recovery, she also saw the necessity of keeping alive his interests in public affairs and his contacts and she set herself about that job. She had already fallen into acquaintance with leftYDwing labor agitators and she brought these people as frequently as she could to her imprisoned husband where they proceeded to work upon a mind practically empty so far as labor and economic problems were concerned. The moment a person of Mrs. Roosevelt's type exposes herself to these infections, the word gets around radical circles, whose denizens are quick to see the possibilities in an instrument of this kind. During Roosevelt's term in Albany she was extensively cultivated by these groups, so that when she went to Washington in 1933 they had easy and friendly access to her. I think it must be said for her that at this point YD in 1933 YD the country, including its public men, were not too well informed about the peculiar perils involved in Red propaganda activities. The Reds seized upon three or four very popular American democratic cults YD (1) freedom of speech, (2) the defense of the downtrodden laborer YD the forgotten man, (3) the succor of the poor. They also began to penetrate the colleges in both the teaching staffs and the student bodies through their various front organizations dominated by Reds. The first attempt to expose these designs was made by the House Committee on UnYDAmerican Activities. The attacks upon Martin Dies and the Dies Committee, as it was known, were engineered and carried out almost entirely by the Communist Party. But the Communist Party itself was powerless to do anything effective and it used some of the most powerful and prominent persons in the country to do its dirty work {Does this not also apply to all other organizations/religions? - sog} oung Communist League and a group of workers including William W. Hinckley (Roosevelt/Cremac - Reagan/Brady -- 2 Hinkleys? - sog} . Here was the wife of the President of the United States, a separate department of the government, using the White House as a lobbying ground for a crowd of young Commies and Pinkies against a committee of Congress.19 At this very moment, Joe Lash was living in the White House as Mrs. Roosevelt's guest, while Joe Cadden and Abbot Simon were occasional boarders there. . Joe Lash had been the leader of the movement in the American Student Union. Lash worked in collaboration with the Communist Party. After this, the American Student Union became a mere tool of the Red organization in America. the assembled young philosophers gave the President and Mrs. Roosevelt a hearty Bronx cheer. And now, of course, Mrs. Roosevelt felt they were Communists, although she had rejected all of the overwhelming evidence before that. Booing the President suddenly turned them into Communists. . A member of Congress, and ardent New Dealer, visited the White House one morning. While there he saw Abbot Simon of the national board of the American outh Congress, come out of one of the bedrooms. He couldn't believe his eyes. He asked the White House usher if he was mistaken. The usher assured him he was not, that this little Commie tool had been occupying that room for two weeks and sleeping in the bed Lincoln had slept in. These are probably not more than 80,000 or 90,000 in number, if that. But there are several hundred thousand, perhaps half a million, men and women in America, but chiefly in New ork and the large eastern industrial states, who string along with the Communists without being members of the party. The President's father was a sixth generation Roosevelt who played out decently the role of a Hudson River squire. He was a dull, formal and respectable person moving very narrowly within the orbit set by custom for such a man. By 1900, however, the name Roosevelt had become a good one for promotional purposeyYYYY".Y~Y~^Y~S<OYYYYY~`'""Yz--~s>oY~Y~ Y-YY Y~Y|Y~Y~cY~Y.Y*YDRY~YxYqY}Y~'YfY~YyY~Y~Yx Y/Y,Y+Y~Y(AAAAYYYYEYEEIIIIDNOOOOYxOUUUYY~YaYY YaYYYYY YYY Y !YYY~Y$YY"YoYYvYmYY#YY
ypYs, because it had become illustrious by reason of Theodore Roosevelt who belonged to a very different branch of the family. On Franklin D. Roosevelt's mother's side there was certainly nothing distinguished in the blood. Her father was a crusty old China Sea trader and opium smuggler. The family had much of its fortune in soft coal mines Roosevelt was born and grew up in the midst of a baronial estate, surrounded by numerous acres and many servants and hemmed about with an elaborate seclusion. What sort of boy he was we do not know, save that he was carefully guarded from other boys and grew up without that kind of boyhood association usual in America. The only books that really interested him were books on the Navy, particularly old books such as appeal to a collector. He did amass a considerable library in this field. It is to be assumed he read many of them. But the history of the Navy and its battles is not the history of the United States or of Europe or of their tremendous and complex political and social movements. They never elected anybody. They offered the nomination to young Roosevelt and he took it reluctantly. But this was an auspicious year for the New ork Democrats. In 1912, with the Republicans split in the great TaftYDRoosevelt feud, the Democrats swept the country and Roosevelt, though in bed throughout the campaign with typhoid, was reelected State Senator. When Wilson entered the White House and someone suggested it would be a good idea to have a Democratic Roosevelt in the administration, Franklin Roosevelt was offered the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, When the First World War ended he was 36. Apparently his service in the Department was satisfactory, though I have never seen anywhere any authentic evidence about it one way or the other. Actually he was not very well known and had absolutely no record of his own to justify the nomination. But luck dogged his heels. {Luck/good fortune/auscpicious circumstances/ad infinitum - sog} Then in August, 1921 Roosevelt was stricken with infantile paralysis, which put an end to his career in politics for the next seven years. During his Harvard days, shortly after his marriage, he and his bride took a trip to Europe YD a regular tourist's wandering from city to city. He had not been in Europe since save twice when he went as Assistant Secretary during the war on a naval inspection tour for about a month, and at the end of the war on another tour in connection with the demobilization of naval forces in Europe. et somehow his promotion managers whipped up the myth that he possessed some kind of intimate and close knowledge of Life up to this had been a long succession of gifts from Lady Luck, whose attendance he had come to think of as a settled and dependable affair. And she had failed him. The visitation of the terrible sickness had perhaps effaced from his character the assumption of superior fortune that made him hold his head so high In his efforts at recovery he had gone to Warm Springs, Ga., and spent several years there. But Warm Springs became the subject of one of the most curious deals in the nomination of a man to high office he said "one of the reasons he could not stand for governor was because he had put a great deal of his personal fortune into Warm Springs, and he felt he should stay and manage the enterprise so that it would eventually become a paying proposition." "Confirming my telephone message I wish much that I might consider the possibility of running for governor." Roosevelt then gave two reasons why he could not: (1) "our own record in New ork is so clear that you will carry the state no matter who is nominated" and (2) "My doctors are definite that the continued improvement in my condition is dependent on avoidance of a cold climate" and "daily exercise in Warm Springs during the winter months." He added: "As I am only 46 years old I owe it to my family and myself to give the present constant improvement a chance to continue ... I must therefore with great regret confirm my decision not to accept the nomination."31 {Roosevelt trying to 'back out' of his role as schill... -sog} Mrs. Roosevelt was in Rochester as a member of the Women's Committee for Al Smith. So were Ed Flynn and John J. Raskob, recently named chairman of the National Democratic Committee to manage Al Smith's campaign for the presidency. {...but Elanor is in deep. - sog} But Flynn told Smith that he believed Roosevelt could be induced to accept, that his health treatments were not the real reason for his refusal, that the real reason was the financial obligations he had outstanding at Warm Springs, that he was facing a heavy personal loss but that if this could be gotten out of the way he might yield. Smith told Flynn to tell Roosevelt they would take care of his financial problem. "I don't know how the hell we can do it, but we'll do it some way," he said.32 Flynn suggested that the problem be put up to Raskob. This was done. Smith asked Raskob to telephone Roosevelt. Raskob thought it over but decided to talk to Mrs. Roosevelt about it. He asked Mrs. Roosevelt for her frank opinion. She replied that if her husband were to say his health would permit him to run then Raskob could rely on it and that the real reason was the financial problem at Warm Springs. Everybody got the impression that Mrs. Roosevelt wanted her husband to run. Raskob then asked him to say frankly what they amounted to. Roosevelt replied: "Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars." Raskob then brought the whole matter to a head by saying: "All right. our nomination is important in New ork State. I am in this fight to get rid of Prohibition which I believe to be a terrible social curse and I think the only way to do it is to elect Al Smith. I am willing therefore to underwrite the whole sum of $250,000. ou can take the nomination and forget about these obligations. ou can have a fundYDraising effort and if it falls short of the total I will make up the difference." Roosevelt was a little flabbergasted at the offer. {Elanor was not? - sog} Roosevelt was built by propaganda, before the war on a small scale and after the war upon an incredible scale, into a wholly fictitious character YD a great magnanimous lover of the world, a mighty statesman before whom lesser rulers bowed in humility, a great thinker, a great orator YD one of the greatest in history YD an enemy of evil in all its forms. In his first administration someone was responsible for a very effective job of selling Roosevelt to the public. But over and above this some cunning techniques were industriously used to enhance the picture. For instance, Mrs. Roosevelt took over the job of buttering the press and radio reporters and commentators. They were hailed up to Hyde Park for hamburger and hot dog picnics. They went swimming in the pool with the Great Man. They were invited to the White House. And, not to be overlooked, it was the simplest thing in the world for them to find jobs in the New Deal for the members of their families. *** sog *** The most powerful propaganda agencies yet conceived by mankind are the radio and the moving pictures. Practically all of the radio networks and all of the moving picture companies moved into the great task of pouring upon the minds of the American people daily YD indeed hourly, ceaselessly YD the story of the greatest American who ever lived, breathing fire and destruction against his critics who were effectually silenced, while filling the pockets of the people with billions of dollars of war money. The radio was busy not only with commentators and news reporters, but with crooners, actors, screen stars, soap opera, comedians, fan dancers, monologists, putting over on the American mind not only the greatness of our Leader but the infamy of his critics, the nobility of his glamorous objectives and the sinister nature of the scurvy plots of his political enemies. The people were sold first the proposition that Franklin D. Roosevelt was the only man who could keep us out of war; second that he was the only man who could fight successfully the war which he alone could keep us out of; and finally that he was the only man who was capable of facing such leaders as Churchill and Stalin on equal terms and above all the only man who could cope successfully with the ruthless Stalin in the arrangements for the postYDwar world. *** sog *** The ordinary man did not realize that Hitler and Mussolini were made to seem as brave, as strong, as wise and noble to the people of Germany and Italy as Roosevelt was seen here. Hitler was not pictured to the people of Germany as he was presented here. He was exhibited in noble proportions and with most of those heroic virtues which were attributed to Roosevelt here and to Mussolini in Italy and, of course, to Stalin in Russia. I do not compare Roosevelt to Hitler. I merely insist that the picture of Roosevelt sold to our people and which still lingers upon the screen of their imaginations was an utterly false picture, was the work of false propaganda and that, among the evils against which America must protect herself one of the most destructive is the evil of modern propaganda techniques applied to the problem of government. {Eugenics was in vogue here, as well as Germany, and would have formed the science of the future *immediately* if Hitler had not been linked to its 'final outcome', giving it a bad name. - sog} There was really nothing complex about Roosevelt. He was of a wellYDknown type found in every city and state in political life. He is the wellYDborn, rich gentleman with a taste for public life, its importance and honors, who finds for himself a post in the most corrupt political machines, utters in campaigns and interviews the most pious platitudes about public virtue while getting his own dividends out of public corruption one way or another. e NRA Act provided an appropriation of $3,300,000,000 which the President was given to be spent for relief and recovery at his own discretion. He now had in his hands a sum of money equal to as much as the government had spent in ten years outside the ordinary expenses of government. He decided how it should be spent and where. If a congressman or senator wanted an appropriation for his district, instead of introducing a bill in Congress, he went up to the White House with his hat in his hands and asked the President for it. All over the country, states, cities, counties, business organizations, institutions of all sorts wanted projects of all kinds. Instead of going to Congress they went to the President. After that congressmen had to play along with the President or they got very little or nothing for their districts. This was the secret of the President's power, but it was also a tremendous blow at a very fundamental principle of our government which is designed to preserve the independence of the Congress from the Executive. In the same way, blankYDcheck legislation led to the subservience of Congress and the rise of the bureaucracy. Under our traditional system, Congress alone could pass laws. The executive bureau merely enforced the law. But now Congress began to pass laws that created large bureaus and empowered those bureaus to make "regulations" or "directives" within a wide area of authority. Under a law like that the bureau became a quasiYDlegislative body authorized by Congress to make regulations which had the effect of law. This practice grew until Washington was filled with a vast array of bureaus that were making laws, enforcing them and actually interpreting them through courts set up within the bureaus, literally abolishing on a large scale within that area the distinction between executive, legislative and judicial processes. Many of these bureaus were never even authorized by Congress. Even the Comptroller General of the United States, who audits the government's accounts, declared he had never heard of some of them. They were created by a new method which Roosevelt exploited. Instead of asking Congress to pass a law, set up a bureau and appropriate money, the President merely named a group of men who were authorized by him to organize a corporation under the laws of the states. This done, there was a government corporation instead of a bureau and a group of corporation directors instead of commissioners. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was given a blanket appropriation by Congress and authority to borrow money. It borrowed twenty or more billions. The RFC would buy the stock of a new corporation and lend it money YD ten, fifty or a hundred million, billions in some cases. Thus the President bypassed Congress and the Constitution and engaged in activities as completely unconstitutional as the imagination can conceive, such as operating business enterprises in Mexico and Canada. By means of the blankYDcheck appropriations, the blankYDcheck legislation and the government corporation, there is no power forbidden to the government by the Constitution which it cannot successfully seize. And if these techniques are permitted to continue the Constitution will be destroyed and our system of government changed utterly without a vote of the people or any amendment to the Constitution. Roosevelt by his various hit or miss experiments all designed to get power into his hands, prepared a perfect blueprint for some future dictator of the modern school to usurp without very much difficulty all the powers he needs to operate a firstYDclass despotism in America. Having changed the Neutrality Act, given a million army rifles to England and increased the army to 1,500,000, the President took the next step YD he handed over to Britain 50 destroyers belonging to the American navy without authority of Congress. Those men and women who formed the various committees to induce this country to go into the war approved these moves. They were honest about it and logical, because they were saying openly we should give every aid, even at the risk of war. But the President was saying he was opposed to going to war and that he was doing these things to stay out of war. I do not here criticize his doing these things. I criticize the reason he gave, which was the very opposite of the truth. At the time he did these things, 83 per cent of the people month after month were registering their opposition to getting in the war. After the 1940 election, in fact early in 1941, the President's next decision was the LendYDLease proposal. Senator Burton K. Wheeler declared that this was a measure to enable the President to fight an undeclared war on Germany. The truth is that the President had made up his mind to go into the war as early as October, 1940. To believe differently is to write him, our naval chiefs of staff and all our high military and naval officers down as fools. The answer must be that Roosevelt lied to the people for their own good. And if Roosevelt had the right to do this, to whom is the right denied? At what point are we to cease to demand that our leaders deal honestly and truthfully with us? There must be a thorough philosophical inquiry into the limits within which this convenient discursive weapon can be used. It has been generally supposed that our diplomats are free to lie to foreign diplomats, also that in war and on the way into war we are free to lie ad libitum to the enemy. The right of the President YD and maybe certain lesser dignitaries YD to lie to our own people and, perhaps, in certain defined situations, to each other ought to be explored and settled. Thus it may be used impartially by the representatives of all parties. It does not seem fair to limit the right of lying only to good and truthful men. (TruthMonger Lives!!! - sog} President and the Prime Minister issued what they called a Joint Declaration. The most important parts of that document were the first three paragraphs: "First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or otherwise. "Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed desires of the peoples concerned. "Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live and they wish to see sovereign rights and selfYDgovernment restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them."